Jan Ferdynand Olszewski (20 August 1930 – 7 February 2019) was a Polish conservative lawyer and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Poland for five months between December 1991 and early June 1992 and later became a leading figure of the conservative Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland.
During his premiership, Olszewski's cabinet worked under new international conditions. At the end of December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved. This motivated the government to start integration with NATO and European Community. For the first time, in official documents, it was mentioned that membership in NATO is part of Polish defence strategy. Negotiations to withdraw Russian armies from Poland started at the end of October 1990, were accelerated. In March 1992, a period of confusion occurred when president Lech Wałęsa presented his conception of new economic and military alliance with former Warsaw Pact during his visit to Germany, which went against the euro Atlantic direction of the government. Olszewski’s government changed the concept of privatization of national corporations. Total stop of privatization led to open conflict with liberal groups in the parliament. On 22 May 1992, Olszewski opposed the signing of a clause in Polish-Russian Treaty of Friendly and Neighbourly Cooperation, which handed over former Russian military bases to international Polish-Russian corporations. Olszewski sent a telegram to Moscow to the president Lech Wałęsa informing of government opposition to the clause. Wałęsa, after a conversation with Boris Yeltsin changed the controversial clause. However, this did not stop further clashes with the president.
Olszewski's cabinet did not hold a permanent parliamentary majority. Attempts to extend the coalition, first to Democratic Union, Liberal Democratic Congress and Polish Economic Programme, and then to Confederation of Independent Poland, were unsuccessful. On 24 May 1992, the council of the Democratic Union wrote a report calling the government to resign. On 26 May, Wałęsa sent a formal note to the Marshal of the Sejm, informing of withdrawal of support for the government. On 27 May, the four parties prepared for the vote of no confidence against the government. The following day, the Sejm passed a resolution obligating the Minister of Interior (at the time Antoni Macierewicz), to publish the list of communist secret police collaborators. On 29 May, representative of the Democratic Union, Jan Rokita, presented a vote of no confidence request on the behalf of 65 members of the parliament of the three parties. On 2 June, the final day of coalition negotiations with the Confederation of Independent Poland, Macierewicz met with deputy Marshal of that party, informing him that its leader, Leszek Moczulski, was on the list of collaborators which will be presented to the Sejm the following day.
The cabinet was recalled by the Sejm in voting after the midnight of 5 June 1992, few hours after publishing the list. Olszewski supported the decision of Macierewicz, proposing to establish an independent commission to verify the validity of the published documents. The Sejm did not debate this proposal. Wałęsa pressured on the Sejm to speed up the vote of no confidence, sending his own request. On 5 June 1992, 00:00 AM, after a vote of no confidence was approved, with 273 in favour and 119 against, Olszewski was forced to resign as prime minister and his cabinet was immediately replaced in an event known as the nightshift ("Nocna zmiana"). After Olszewski's dismissal, Wałęsa designated Waldemar Pawlak as the new prime minister. Olszewski's premiership was the second shortest in the history of the Third Republic.
Early life and World War II Born in Warsaw on 20 August 1930, Olszewski originated from a working-class family employed in the railway industry who were strongly connected to the Polish Socialist Party. Olszewski was related to Stefan Aleksander Okrzeja, a Polish socialist nationalist from the turn of the 20th century who was executed by Russian authorities in 1905 for leading insurgent activities. Despite Olszewski's active preference to right-wing politics later in life, he considered himself sympathetic to socialist causes during his early formative years.
During World War II, Olszewski was active in the Szare Szeregi (Grey Ranks), an underground part of the Polish Scouting Association. According to biographical information published at footnote five, Olszewski participated in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.Laba, p. 209
Political career: 1954–1992 Communist era: 1954–1989
In the immediate post-war years, Olszewski graduated from secondary school in 1949, later going on to study law at the University of Warsaw, where he graduated in 1953. Afterwards, he became an employee of the Ministry of Justice and later worked at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1956, Olszewski joined the writing staff of the weekly Po prostu (Plain Speaking) magazine. As a journalist during the relatively open Polish October, Olszewski came into contact with PZPR First Secretary and de facto head of state Władysław Gomułka, whom he spent many hours interviewing and described having a trustful relationship with after many frank discussions regarding the state of affairs of Poland and the Eastern Bloc. In an article titled "Na spotkanie ludziom z AK" ("Reaching out to the Men of the Home Army") published in March 1956, Olszewski, along with journalists Jerzy Ambroziewicz and Walery Namiotkiewicz, called for the rehabilitation of former Armia Krajowa soldiers who faced persecution from communist authorities for anti-state activities.
One of the first openly published articles of its kind to break the official silence on the Armia Krajowa, Olszewski argued that its veterans deserved a positive historical assessment in the struggle against Nazi Germany, describing all subsequent prosecutions of its ranks as being politically motivated. Despite the government's initial toleration of Po prostu'''s critiques, authorities moved in to forcibly close down the publication's offices in October 1956, citing it of presenting a false view of political and economic realities, spreading "disbeliefs" about socialism and proclaiming "bourgeois concepts". For his part, Olszewski faced a publication ban beginning in 1957. The forcible closure and censoring of Po prostu led Olszewski to become quickly disillusioned with the communist order. As a response, from 1956 to 1962, Olszewski was a member of the Crooked Circle Club, a Warsaw-based underground discussion group composed of intellectuals critical of the regime.Preuße, p. 107 During the 1960s, Olszewski became a leading defence attorney in political trials. Among others, he defended writer and journalist Melchior Wańkowicz, activist Jacek Kuroń, historian Karol Modzelewski and poet Janusz Szpotański. His professional activity was banned again in 1968 after the March student protests.
However, Olszewski returned to practice law in 1970 as Edward Gierek assumed power. Grateful for Olszewski's legal defence at his trial, the writer Melchior Wańkowicz kept a close relationship with Olszewski for the rest of his life, bequeathing funds to the lawyer and fellow dissident Jan Józef Lipski to help future defendants of political crimes shortly before his death in 1974.Ziolkowska-Boehm, pp. 105–109 Olszewski later became a signatory of the Letter of 59 in 1975, an open protest to changes to the republic's communist constitution.Lipski, p. 27 In 1984, Olszewski served as an auxiliary prosecutor representing the family of murdered pro-Solidarity priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, whose statements during the trial of laying blame for the priest's murder on outside influences created international headlines. Joining the Solidarity movement in the early 1980s, Olszewski quickly rose to become a major figure in the opposition movement, playing a key role in drafting its founding charter.Ost, p. 71 He would go on to become one of Solidarity's most active lawyers and legal experts.Tismaneanu, p. 129 Olszewski, along with Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa and other anti-government dissidents, participated in the Round Table Talks in early 1989 with the ruling PZPR, where he served as the opposition's legal expert. The talks successfully paved the way towards the partially free 1989 parliamentary elections.
Post-Communist era: 1989–1991
With the fall of the communist regime in 1989, Olszewski was appointed as a member of the State Tribunal that year, a position he would hold until 1991. In 1990, Olszewski joined the conservative Centre Agreement, whose party membership composed primarily of Wałęsa supporters in that year's presidential election. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in November 1990 after his first-round defeat in the presidential election, newly elected president Wałęsa sought a new prime minister.Weiner, p. 80 Initially, the president turned to Olszewski to take the position, though Olszewski quickly refused the post after numerous disagreements with Wałęsa over conditions the president placed on the prime minister's cabinet. Instead, Wałęsa turned to Jan Krzysztof Bielecki of the Liberal Democratic Congress to form a government.Wróbel, p. 280 Bielecki's government lasted for the rest of 1991, collapsing in the aftermath of the inconclusive 1991 parliamentary elections.
While Wałęsa appointed Bronisław Geremek as prime minister, an accord was signed by five centrist and rightist parties in the Sejm, including the Liberal Democratic Congress, the Christian National Union, the Peasants' Agreement, the Confederation of Independent Poland and the Center Civic Alliance list (whose Olszewski's Centre Agreement belonged to) to select the next premier.Wróbel, pp. 283-284 The parties supported Olszewski, a parliamentary outsider and respected lawyer from the Solidarity movement, to unite the various clubs.Weiner, p. 82 Grudgingly, Wałęsa, who no longer had a stable working relationship with Olszewski, honoured the coalition agreement and appointed the lawyer as premier on 6 December. Three weeks of selecting the cabinet followed.Wróbel, p. 284 In the meantime, the original accord behind Olszewski's appointment immediately began to fall apart, as both the Liberal Democratic Congress and the Confederation of Independent Poland withdrew their support from Olszewski over economic and cabinet disagreements. Similarly, the Democratic Union refused to support an administration not committed to rapid economic reform, a concern shared with the Liberal Democrats.Stone, p. 104 Despite the weakened alliance, Olszewski's minority government was accepted by parliament on 23 December 1991.
Prime Minister: 1991–1992
Foreign and domestic policy
Following the oath of office, Olszewski's government faced difficulties on many fronts. Previously, Olszewski had placed deep criticism on Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz from the previous two administrations and his controversial Balcerowicz Plan, vigorously opposing the minister's shock therapy program. Removing Balcerowicz from the cabinet, Olszewski selected Karol Lutowski, a known critic of shock therapy, as his replacement. With unemployment rising to 11.4 percent and the nation's gross domestic product declining by ten percent over the course of one year, the Olszewski government faced pressure to amend the unpopular economic plan. Despite his professed monetarist beliefs, Olszewski pushed for a package of reforms to loosen credit, ease earlier anti-inflation policies, reintroduce price supports for a number of agricultural products, and release more subsidies to the state sector of the Polish economy.